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Spain's Santander Bank reports 32 pct profit increase in Q1

Xinhua, April 29, 2015 Adjust font size:

Spanish bank Banco Santander reported on Tuesday a total of 1.717 billion euros (1.884 billion U.S. dollars) of net profits between January and March 2015, 32 percent more than in the same period a year earlier.

The figure was attributed to a bigger commercial activity that allowed the bank to improve its profitability by 11.5 percent.

According to the bank, loans to clients increased by 14.3 percent to a total of 793.965 billion euros, deposits rose by 10.8 percent to 687.362 billion euros and total assets amounted to 1.36 trillion euros, a 17 percent rise in comparison with the same period of a year earlier.

The bank's non-performing loan rate stood at 4.85 percent, falling by 0.36 points in Spain where it stood at 7.25 percent. The bank earned 357 million euros in Spain.

Banco Santander executive director Jose Antonio Alvarez predicted that loans would stop falling in 2016 in Spain. Nowadays loans are rising in two main areas, he said, mortgages and businesses.

He also urged the Spanish government to solve the "great problem" of unemployment, whose rate was close to 24 percent in the first three months of 2015.

Alvarez highlighted that macroeconomic figures needed to have an impact on unemployment. "Until the problem of unemployment is not solved, we cannot say Spain is fine," he said. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollars) Endit